Failure to WB

I was dreading it and looking forward to it at the same time and I have not been disappointed: one-touch one balance is an art that needs to be learned and then practiced. I have obviously no clue how to do it and auto white balance has some ugly consequences.

I am using a Sony CX550V in a LM Stingray+ housing with the Fathom WA90 lens. The setup can shoot beautiful videos. However, WB is a nightmare. I have purchased white fins, but since I have neither the flexibility to extend my leg in between the camera and my subject (most of the time facing me) nor the desire to squish my subject in between my fin and the reef in the background, I end up pointing the camera at my fin somewhat below me and slightly sideways from my subject and unsurprisingly, the resulting balance appears irrelevant when I rotate back to the scene I am interested in. It seems that I would be better off with a slate that I would brandish in front of the housing (but then, how far does it need to be to be of any relevance). However, since others are using fins for that purpose, I thought I'd ask for advice in this forum before giving up on the fins.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

BTW, I am currently using two AquaSun eLEDs with homemade diffusers as lights, but need to change for something wider, as the wide angle lens needs a much wider illumination than what they provide.

Rather than making a suggestion, let me put it to you as a question.

You are using LEDs which should be daylight balanced. You are shooting in daylight and using the lights as either a fill or, if close enough, as a main illumination. Therefore the kelvin range for all illumination is "Daylight".

Could you explain for what reason(s) are you white balancing?

uwexplorer you should really only be white balancing if you are not using lights. If you are using lights then anything within their range should (more or less) be correctly colour balanced anyway, while everything out of their range (ie everything past 1m/3ft unless you are using lights with REAL juice) will be unbalanced. In other words lights are great for close up work, but not much else. For that reason many people never use lights for video unless it is a night dive, a cave dive or a wreck penetration etc where there is no natural light available.

If you are diving without lights and using a red filter you can white balance off of a host of things including the surface of the water, white sand and even the palm of your hand. It takes a bit of practice but it really isn't that difficult for video if you have one touch available as a control. You can of course still use lights for close up work if you have a flip filter arm to remove the filter when needed and then you can switch back again for the WA shots.

Hope this helps.

No matter how diligently you white balance underwater, you will still need to touch it up in post.

Uwexplorer, if you want a meaty read on WB, I wrote up one of my WB presentations from a prior DEMA here: White Balance

Regarding the 550V, I have found that using a white slate (with red permanent marker scribbled on it) and adjusting white offset in the camera all the way to the right (warm), produces a good, neutrally balanced image in blue water.

Simon, if you use cyan filters on your lights, you can WB for ambient conditions and use your lights as fill lights. I do this for all my daylight shooting.

Eric, though I tend to agree that some touch up will be necessary, given the compressed format of most video, I am a STRONG believer in shooting it as close to "right' as possible. You can only touch up so much in post before it blocks, bands and breaks down.

Happy reading!

There are various techniques to MWB, with various results:

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=15730

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showt...st&p=122400

And dealing with it in post:

http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23629

I am a STRONG believer in shooting it as close to "right' as possible.

I was reading this thread and had a thought...

So what should we perceive as 'right' what our eye tells us at depth... What our camera tells us at depth (off surface sunlight, palms of our hands, sand, fin tips, W/B slate)... Or our buddies tank/cylinder... What exactly is 'right' do we know what is actually right or do we leave that up to the camera and is the actual camera 'right'. Will my version of a good W/B be the same as anyone else's????

IS THERE AN ACTUAL 'STANDARD' COLOUR/COLOR FOR EVERYTHING????

Dive safe

DeanB

No matter how diligently you white balance underwater, you will still need to touch it up in post.

Exactly...and the less scene to scene variability in WB (by using preset "Daylite" WB + good lights) the easier it is to adjust things slightly in the NLE.

This goes for post correction of WB and/or color balance (ie enhancing the warmer colors or correcting for the ambient water color).

Each to their own, but it works very well for me.

Simon, if you use cyan filters on your lights, you can WB for ambient conditions and use your lights as fill lights. I do this for all my daylight shooting.

Sure, but that's another step and another complication for someone who looks like they are struggling with the whole WB concept. I wanted to get the point across that in general it is easy to WB and get great results without lights and that you don't actually even need to WB with lights. Personally I try to shoot without artificial light wherever possible, but we all have our preferences!

Cheers, Simon

What exactly is 'right' do we know what is actually right or do we leave that up to the camera and is the actual camera 'right'.

Good point. To be honest I never really know if the WB has been spot on until after I review footage topside. If I start to second guess the camera underwater it almost always ends up looking crap, so yes I do trust the camera and then correct in post. Occasionally you'll get a shot that is just perfect right off the tape, but that it is very, very rare. Well at least it is for me!

Cheers, Simon

Thanks for all the feedback. I guess that after having read everything there is to read, I will stil have to practice and get my own set of recipes, since everything and its contrary seems to be out there :-) I should probably have mentioned that I am not one of you happy many diving tropical waters, confined as I am to cold (and currently at times murky) waters of SoCal. Additionally, the dark canopy of kelp forest does not let much sun light through at depth, which makes a lot of the tropical clear water advices somewhat inapplicable...

You'd be amazed at how much light is actually still getting through even in what we think of as green murky water. You have to have pretty powerful lights to overpower a big ball of gas which is undergoing a constant fusion reaction and has a diameter of 1.4 million kilometers, even if it is 150 million kilometers away!

You've definitely got the right idea in experimenting and seeing what works for you though so good luck!

It should be noted that custom WB is highly camera dependent. I white balance on a white slate with red marker scribbled on it (I do what Shawn does -- white slate balance is way too strong, so we tone it down by scribbling on them in red). My 5D2 works perfectly like this, but I find that the Sony CX550V camcorder (with red filter) does really bad things, requiring WB shift of +4 (warmer). This would suggest that I could simply WB on a white slate with no red marker, but that doesn't produce quite the right WB, either.

So you will definitely have to experiment to find the solution that works best for you. Good luck.

Nice...

However WHAT white balance is the right balance??? What seems good to me may not be to others I'm happy with what I do however a editor/colourist may not be... Or even a competition judge at a festival maybe unimpressed with your idea of the perfect W/B and cost you a place.

Is there a perfect or standard W/B ... ? Or is it personal taste?

Dive safe

DeanB

It's personal taste. I just don't like the reddish look that a lot of video has. When we're underwater, things look blue, and I prefer to have some of that blue in my footage.

I saw the Disneynature movie, Oceans, which I'm sure had lots of post. It's almost as if it were white balanced, and then had the red removed. Much of the water was simply ... whitish or clear. It was a clear style for the film. I'm sure Drew knows everything about what they did in the movie and can weigh in. Drew?

I agree with Eric. Keep the blues natural. I like some pop in the color but not too much. Some times I push it a bit in the capture and pull it back in post with adds to the contrast in the image. I find a lot of "professional" productions to be too blue, less color than I actually see with my eyes which I find disappointing.

I agree, when I questioned the 'blueness' of some U/W progs I was told its was because this is how the 'normal' viewer perceived the aquatic realm (I suppose not everyone has filters when they dive/snorkel) However this to me is like watching old wartime footage that has been coloured, so much better to see it natural. So shouldn't we try to do the same with our footage shouldn't there be a standard/natural colour.

Dive safe

DeanB

Yes I agree that many top stream productions are very blue. I remember diving with a cameraman a couple of years ago who was shooting for NatGeo and he was diving without lights and wasn't white balancing at all. I asked him why he wasn't white balancing and he told me that he had been told not to because 'there isn't a whole lot of red down there so what's the point?'. WB is a personal taste if it is your own production, but if you are working for someone else then you just do what you are told to do!

Cheers, Simon

It's personal taste. I just don't like the reddish look that a lot of video has. When we're underwater, things look blue, and I prefer to have some of that blue in my footage.

 

I saw the Disneynature movie, Oceans, which I'm sure had lots of post. It's almost as if it were white balanced, and then had the red removed. Much of the water was simply ... whitish or clear. It was a clear style for the film. I'm sure Drew knows everything about what they did in the movie and can weigh in. Drew?

I'm not sure I can add anything. Maybe Richard can convey what his instructions were. My recollection with Luc Drion and Philippe Ros (DP) and cameramen Didier, Eric (35mm film), René et al was no white balance but using specific HDCAM presets (hyper gamma curves etc) for the look they like to match 3/4 perf 35mm. I do know le deux Jacques had to reedit the film for the Disney's perceived US audience. I only saw the euro version so I'll wait for my copy of the BluRay from US to see if there's a difference as I already have the french BD. Maybe that bleached look was for US folks!

There are reasons NOT to MWB on bigger productions. For the DP, he also has to consider scene matching. With Luc and Philippe, they had a look they wanted for the underwater scenes. They are very 35mm film centric, mixing HDCAM clips with 35mm footage. They also had to consider how to shoot for the post guys. Varying WB means it is harder to match scenes for a seamless sequence, especially with mixed formats of telecined 35mm and HDCAM. How many times have I shuddered at ugly sequences on TV because sequences were comprised of clips from different cameras, camera operators and thus look so different and the post guy could do much with it with a deadline looming and also limited expertise. I'm pretty sure Francois and Philippe came up with a look that they liked and they left out WB for the natural light scenes.

As for looks in general, you are exactly right. A director usually specifies a 'look' for every scene to the DP and colorist/post guys. Think the bleached look for 3 Kings or the Matrix look. There isn't one truth. However, shooting a color chart will give the most accurate color rendition. But even pool scenes in Hollywood are graded to look blue or green, for that same reason of a 'look.'

So shouldn't we try to do the same with our footage shouldn't there be a standard/natural colour.

I don't even think that sentence makes sense underwater because if you move your white slate a tiny bit closer or further, the WB will change. It's going to be blue at some point in the distance.

I've just seen too much white-balanced video where you can virtually see the red channel's noise dancing around. It's often pushed way too far!